News

Polis member Lisbon will host Velo-City in 2021

14 December 2018

Polis Member Lisbon will be the host city of the 2021 edition of Velo-City, one of the world’s leading conference on planning for cycling-friendly cities. The Portuguese capital is the third Polis member to host one of the latest editions of the conference after Arnhem Nijmegen (2017) and Dublin (2019).

Lisbon stood out among the two other finalists, Ljubljana and Valencia, for its strong political commitment at the local and national level to promote urban cycling and to highlight the benefits associated with active mobility.

Cycling in Lisbon

The Portuguese capital can count on more than 90 kilometres of cycling network and plans are currently underway to bring this number up to 200 kilometres by 2021. Strong efforts have also focused on the creation of bicycle parking facilities in the city centre and on the development of a 4th generation bike sharing scheme. The scheme, called “Gira”, has quickly become a valuable integration to the public transport system and has recorded one million trips in less than one year of service. Based on these results, the service will be strengthened and expanded to other areas of the city.

About Velo-City

The Velo-City conference is organised by the European Cyclists’ Federation. The first edition took place in 1980 in Bremen, Germany, and since then has taken place in cities such as Copenhagen, Montreal, Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro.

For more information about cycling in Lisbon and in Portugal, please read this article.